By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

WORKS Minister Desmond Bannister yesterday confirmed that government has resurrected plans for a new primary school in Carmichael with a tender exercise for a school in Inagua “ready to go”.

Mr Bannister said the Carmichael school could cost as much as $20m to construct as he underlined the government’s commitment to a “real investment” in education.

“We are looking at this new primary school in Carmichael,” he said as a guest on Guardian Talk Radio show Off The Record with Zhivargo Laing.

“It is going to be an amazing school. It is going to be on Carmichael Road, just as the government promised.” 

He continued: “This is a project, quite frankly when you [Mr Laing] and I were in Cabinet, we wanted to do. This project has sat dormant for five years. I just looked at the plans yesterday and we expect that Cabinet is going to be moving ahead with that shortly.

“That’s the focus on a new school right now, but we have to build other schools. We have the Inagua school, that I have also looked at the plans, and that is going out to tender very shortly.”

Mr Bannister explained that the Carmichael road area was targeted after the Ministry of Education analysed population trends.

“That is going to meet a lot of needs out there,” he said. 

“We had also looked at a junior high school in that area also, so I am sure that they will soon be looking at that.”

Mr Bannister, who served as education minister in the last Ingraham administration, said the plans were untouched last term by the Christie administration.

“When we left [office] unceremoniously in 2012, and I was minister of education, we were also looking at that Inagua school that had been burnt down. I have looked at that also very recently, that is something that is ready to go out to tender now from our ministry. 

“When you are looking at the development of schools, you have those two and you also have the one in Holmes Rock in Grand Bahama, that was started by the former administration, that has been left, that needs to be completed. 

“These are three major schools that are going to run you, the one in New Providence may run you into $20 million to build and so you are talking about a real investment of the Bahamian people’s money.”